The Next Mrs. Blackthorne (Bitter Creek Book 6) (17 page)

There was nothing tender about the way he captured her mouth. It was all about possession. A man staking his claim on his woman. His tongue came stroking as his fingers broke the narrow strap between her breasts, leaving them naked for his hands, which grasped them hard and pushed them upward. His mouth broke free from her mouth and captured one taut nipple.

Jocelyn moaned as he suckled her, feeling her knees turn to weak reeds. He must have felt her falling, because he gathered her up in his arms and stalked to the edge of the pond, where he laid her in the grass. He broke the strings on her bikini bottom and threw it aside, then stripped himself.

“You’re mine,” he muttered against her mouth, as he spread her legs wide with his knees and thrust inside. “Mine.”

The sound was guttural, his lovemaking raw and savage. Jocelyn realized it for what it was—a reaffirmation of life. He had believed her dead. She was reborn in his arms.

Their passion was violent. Sweaty and primitive. Tumultuous. To her shame, she was as hot for him as he was for her, and they both cried out at the moment of climax.

When he was done, he rolled away from her onto his back in the grass beside the pond and covered his eyes with his forearm. Jocelyn saw his throat working and heard him swallow loudly several times. He seemed to be fighting some great emotion.

She reached out a hand to comfort him, but he shoved it away.

“Don’t touch me!”

He sat up facing the pond, with his back to her.

Jocelyn turned her face away, confused and hurt. She sat up, wanting to cover herself, wanting to be away from this man with his strange moods and stranger behavior. She stood, naked, and walked to the flat rock where she’d left her shirt and jeans.

He glanced at her over his shoulder, watching her as she dressed. “When we get back to the house I want you gone.”

She pulled her shirt over her shoulders and turned to him as she buttoned it, noticing that his eyes slid down her body to the apex of her thighs, and that he liked what he saw.

She felt hurt by his rejection. And confused by it. Especially after their tempestuous lovemaking. “Where is it you’d like me to go?” she asked in as calm a voice as she could manage.

“I don’t give a shit. I just want you gone.”

She flushed at his use of such crude language. It was a sign he wasn’t as much in control of himself as he wanted her to believe. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

He stood and crossed to the rock where he’d left his clothes, revealing his lean flanks and hard buttocks. Jocelyn felt the ache between her legs at the remembered pleasure of this man inside her, of the feel of his flesh beneath her hands.

He pulled up his shorts and then his jeans while she stared, unmoving. He glanced at her over his shoulder, scowling.

She flushed and turned to reach for the thong she’d tucked into her jeans pocket for use after she’d taken off her wet suit. She bent to step into it, wondering how much she was revealing as she felt her shirt slip up over her fanny. Her buttocks remained bare even after she’d pulled the tiny scrap of material into place.

She reached quickly for her jeans and felt North’s large hands cup her bottom. And then the caress of his callused fingertips. His mouth nuzzled her shirt away from her shoulder so his lips could reach bare skin.

Here was the tenderness that had been missing during their recent exchange of passion. Here was the show of love that she hadn’t even known she’d been yearning for until he’d offered it.

She angled her head away to give North greater access to her throat, as he kissed the sensitive skin beneath her ear and then tugged gently on her earlobe with his teeth.

Then she heard his voice, rough as sandpaper and heavy with need. “I want you again.”

His hands made short work of the thong, and he unsnapped and unzipped his jeans and freed his arousal. He bent her over the flat rock and thrust himself inside her from behind.

Jocelyn was shocked. And unbearably aroused.

Her palms were flat against the hot rock, and she felt North’s hands come around to tease her nipples as his teeth and tongue caught at the skin at her neck, sending shivers through her. His hands slid down until they found the tiny nubbin that ached with want.

Jocelyn moaned.

North groaned.

She felt her body tightening, felt her legs tremble as they threatened to buckle, felt North’s hand flatten against her belly as he held her upright through the tremors that rocked her. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, fighting against letting go, because she was afraid she would lose herself if she gave him what he seemed to be asking for.

He never asked in words. He only kept up the steady rhythm of his body in hers, driving her toward the precipice, willing her to leap into the chasm. Until finally, there was no escape.

Jocelyn cried out, and heard North’s guttural shout in her ear, as they leapt into the abyss together.

She was trembling too much to stand, and for some reason, she was crying in great gulping sobs. North separated their bodies and turned her into his arms and pulled her tight against him, cocooning her against his chest.

“You see why you have to go,” he said in a harsh voice.

“No, I don’t see,” Jocelyn sobbed. “I don’t understand any of this.”

He took a step back, and without his support Jocelyn wavered, before she sank onto her jeans, which were draped over the abrasive rock. She looked up at him, searching for answers to this enigmatic man.

“I will never love you,” he said brusquely. “I can never love any woman.”

Suddenly, she understood. He cared for her. Or thought he did. And he didn’t like it one bit.

“You mean you don’t choose to love me—or any woman,” she countered.

“Use whatever words you want. It means the same thing. I want you out of my house. Out of my life.”

“I’ll be glad to leave.”

She saw the flicker of regret that flashed across his face before she continued, “In September.”

“Goddammit, Joss. I want you gone
today
!”

“That’s too bad,” Jocelyn said. “We have an agreement. I’m not going to let you say I welshed on the deal when I’m not here in September.”

“I absolve you of any and all—”

“No need, when I’m not going anywhere.”

“Goddammit, Joss—”

“I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t swear so much.”

Jocelyn watched as his lips pressed flat and his eyes narrowed. She stood on wobbly legs and reached for her jeans, putting her buttocks—her very enticing buttocks, she hoped—in North’s way. “You’ll just have to cope,” she said as she pulled on her jeans and zipped them.

His fisted hands hit his hips and his bare toe tapped as she slowly and carefully sat down on the rock and pulled on her socks and boots.

At last she stood and said, “I’m ready to go home now.”

“You won’t leave?” he said.

“Not until September.”

“I’ll transfer the damned stock today. Will that satisfy you?”

“Do whatever you want,” she shot back. “The deal was, I’d stay till September. So I’m staying!”

He grabbed his boots and socks and stalked away toward the horses, leaving her behind. She stared after him with a furrow of worry between her eyes. Why hadn’t she taken advantage of the opportunity to be free? Why hadn’t she rushed back to Clay’s waiting embrace? North clearly didn’t want anything to do with her. He’d admitted he was incapable of loving anyone. What was wrong with her?

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

There was a very good reason why she didn’t want to leave North Grayhawk. She was in love with him.

North had ridden back to the house with Joss, but he’d driven away immediately afterward in his Dodge Ram without giving her any explanation where he was going or when he’d be back. He’d needed time to think. Time to figure out what he was going to do about her. Because somehow she’d gotten under his skin. Maybe even burrowed her way into his heart. Like a virus. Or a tapeworm. Something that had to be gotten over. Or gotten out.

He didn’t trust love. It had made his father a miserable man when the woman he loved had chosen someone else. King had made the four women he’d subsequently taken as wives equally miserable when he wasn’t able to give them the love he was squandering on another man’s wife.

North could see a horrible symmetry in his infatuation—that’s all it could be—with Jocelyn Montrose. She’d been engaged to another man when she’d come to him. Under the terms of their agreement she was going to leave him in September. Only a fool would fall in love with a woman under those circumstances.

North was no fool.

He’d meant it when he’d told Joss he wanted her out of the house. Frankly, he’d been surprised that she hadn’t grabbed at the opportunity to leave. But that could be corrected. He could be a mean sonofabitch. He was sure he could drive her away.

It wouldn’t be easy. He was vulnerable to her tears. Hell, it wouldn’t even take tears. His gut wrenched whenever she was unhappy or uncomfortable. He’d found himself moving heaven and earth to please her, and her smile made him feel good inside.

North grimaced at the realization that he’d run away from his own home this afternoon because he was afraid to face a slip of a woman to whom he owed nothing. How had she stolen past his defenses? What was it about this woman that made him think about her even when she wasn’t around? What made him want her even after he’d just made love to her? What made him wonder what she was thinking, and lie in bed in the dark listening as each slow and steady breath left her body, thinking of ways to please her?

He felt a sense of dread at the thought of what the rest of his life would be like without her. And a sense of doom when he thought of how vulnerable he would be if he let her under his guard. If he let himself love her.

How many times had he heard his father say,
Women never stick around for long. They love money, not men. They’re only good for two things: sex and sons.

Rationally, he knew his father’s attitude toward women was chauvinistic, to say the least. But he had his own experience with his mother, and a series of stepmothers who’d come and gone in his life, who’d seemed to care more about their divorce settlements than about their children, whom they’d happily abandoned in his father’s home to yet another stepmother.

Except for Breed, of course, who’d gone with Sassy.

He saw a light on in the barn and remembered the boy was there. He felt a spurt of guilt that he hadn’t let the kid into the house. But he hadn’t wanted Breed to see him touching and kissing Joss, as he often did when the mood struck him. He had no intention of curbing his behavior. And he didn’t want to have to worry about sounds carrying from the bedroom.

That room in the barn hadn’t been used for a while, and North remembered it had been in pretty bad shape. He stopped his truck. He might as well make sure the kid was okay.

North’s eyebrows rose when he stepped inside the room he’d offered to Breed. It had looked nothing like this a month ago when the boy had moved in. He knew better than to remark on the changes. The kid was sitting up in bed on top of the covers with two pillows arranged behind him, wearing a T-shirt and print boxer shorts, reading a fantasy novel with a buxom woman on the cover holding off a dragon with a sword.

“You okay?” North asked.

“What do you think?” Breed swept his arm around the room, forcing North to focus on the clean, shiny wooden floors, the cowhide decorating the area beside the iron bed, the clean white sheets and pillow-cases, and a colorful patchwork quilt he recognized from his own bedroom. The antler lamp beside the bed had been in the living room of the house. He saw a painting of a nineteenth-century cattle drive on the wall that he knew had been in the guest room.

North realized who was responsible for the transformation when he saw the bowl of Indian paintbrush and black-eyed Susans on the chest of drawers. She’d done the same damn thing to his house. Put flowers all over. Added little feminine touches that neither his housekeeper nor his cook had ever suggested.

“I see Joss’s hand here,” North said.

“I told her there was no need, that I was used to a lot worse,” Breed said. He grinned, one man to another, and added, “She was horrified.”

North found himself grinning back. “You watch out, or she’ll have you putting down the toilet seat and squeezing the toothpaste tube from the bottom instead of the middle.”

Breed laughed. “Sounds like she’s got you hog-tied.”

North sobered. “No woman’s gonna throw a lasso on me. Ever.”

Breed set down his book and dropped his feet over the edge of the bed. “She’s nice, North. She’s not like Sassy.”

North snorted. “That’s for sure.”

“She cares,” Breed continued. “And she doesn’t know me from Adam.”

North had noticed the same thing. Joss had a heart that was wide open to any and everybody. She’d given the cook the week off when the woman had given her some sob story about a niece who needed help with her new baby, and ended up having to do the cooking, along with all the other work she did with North.